Chuseok vacation day 4 part 1: Hahoe Folk Village

On Sunday we set out to Hahoe Folk Village, about forty minutes outside of Andong(1). The village contains a lot of restored and reconstructed traditional Korean houses. When we arrived we found that the mask museum was under construction, but we had a pleasant walk along rows of touristy shops and some nice totems down to the village. Just outside of it was a museum documenting the visit from Queen Elizabeth II. It was fun to wander around the village, which is actually still inhabited by people with modern cars, satellite TV, etc, but look traditional from the outside. One of my favorite parts were melons being grown on the thatch roofs of the cottages. The house of the patriarch of the mostly familial village was also quite interesting. It was a museum containing documents of praise from the king, among other things. Most notable of his achievements the appointment of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin. The village also had lots of tourist trap shops selling dolls of traditional masks, but more on that later.

The pictures start here.

(1) On the bus were a couple little posters declaring "Dokdo belongs to Korea!" The tiny island rock outcropping of Dokdo does in fact belong to Korea. Japan bizarrely claims that it is theirs, even though this is clearly not the case and is deeply offensive to Koreans, who have enough issues with Japan as it is.